I've spent 2+ decades in the anti-abuse/integrity space. I spent 13 years at Microsoft doing anti-spam/anti-phish/anti-malware and email authentication; and 8 years at Meta in ad cloaking, political advertising, and regulatory compliance. Looking to move into the AI space.
I am also an amateur magician. If...
Thanks for posting this, I'm impressed by the level of effort you put towards this, and especially the actions you took after your efforts didn't pay off. It must have been a difficult decision to leave Google without plans on what to do next.
Like other here, I've had "significant concerns" (to put it mildly) with the trajectory of the current administration. I'm not sure what the right set of next steps are, but I'm glad some folks are trying.
I'm not part of the grant-making ecosystem, and observe that perhaps there's some regret over funding OpenAI. But in terms of how to speed up the process of grant-making, I can think of multiple ideas:
1. Don't fund everything all at once, grant chunks of funding a little at time after progress can be evaluated. This is a lot like how a mortgage is granted for building a house.
2. Take an oversight position on the Board of the organization that's being funded. Provide guidance, direction, etc., with regular 1:1 check-in's.
3. Look at the background of the per... (read more)